Have the producers of Emmerdale lost their minds? They have already crashed a plane, exploded several cars and a farm, and burnt down a barn, a factory and a church. But inviting Amanda Donohoe to play a powerful wife and mother who buys up half the village? Now that’s dangerous.

This is the actress who held her own, mostly while naked, against Oliver Reed in Castaway aged just 23; who on LA Law won a Golden Globe and nationwide notoriety with American TV’s first lesbian kiss; and who routinely stunned Hollywood casting directors by throwing down the script and demanding to know who wrote such witless, misogynistic bulls***. Asking her on to Emmerdale is a bit like, to use a suitably rustic metaphor, a chicken farmer asking a fox to dinner. Is even this soap big enough to contain her?

Donohoe herself has no such delusions. “Many actors are quite snobby about soap opera acting,” she says, her accent still poshish North London despite years in La-La Land, “and I can tell you right now that it takes a great deal of talent, experience and good acting to get through it. I wouldn’t hesitate to use these actors in any other format because they’re bloody good at what they do.”

Besides, she says, where else will you find meaty, dramatic writing for women over 40? “Where is it? Where the hell is it? These are women who run the country, run the families, run the businesses, and they’re being ignored. I don’t see anything else being written for women of my age, and believe me I’m fed up with playing detectives. How many times can you do an interview scene? The irony is that it’s the criminals who get all the great dialogue. You’re just sitting there going, ‘And where were you last Thursday, madam?’ ” She tilts back her head and laughs a great dirty laugh: “It’s sooo boooring!”

Donohoe has an infectious way of punching out syllables that makes her a natural storyteller. Even without make-up she is striking, cheek-bones like most people’s elbows, but she won’t play the star: she receives you in casual clothes, strapped from waist to knee into some newfangled back supports that resemble geriatric bondage gear.

In short, far from the diva painted in some past interviews, she’d be terrific company on a boozy night out. And unlike the plucked and pampered Hollywood actresses she lived among until her return to Britain five years ago, she never learnt the soul-sucking art of cheerful neutrality. If she loves someone, she’ll say so. If she hates someone . . .

“Jim Carrey I adored, he’d do a scene six different ways and nail every single one. A mind-blowing talent. Do you know, he cast me in Liar Liarbecause one of his favourite films is The Lair of the White Worm [the 1988 Ken Russell movie in which she plays a “vampire bitch”]. He would stand there on the set and quote Lady Sylvia’s lines back at me. Unbelievable! One of his favourites was, ‘Do you have children?’, to which she replies, ‘Only when there are no men around’! “But there are actors who are so far up their own arses they can’t even see straight. Ninety per cent have been extremely courteous, but it’s really difficult working with one who reads the newspaper off-camera when he should be reacting to your lines. Believe me, that actually happened. ‘PUT that F***ING paper DOWN!!’, I’ve been known to say!”

The actor of whom she has the most mixed feelings is Oliver Reed: “He could be a pussycat. But Olly sabotaged himself over and over again with the alcohol. When I saw him sober, he was morose. He became sparky and fiery after a few drinks, and then he just went into overdrive, into a no man’s land of behaviour. You didn’t know whether he was going to kiss you or hit you.”

She is a moth to the creative spark. Her first boyfriend, whom she met at 15 and waited a year before losing her virginity to, was the soon-to-become-world-famous pop star Adam Ant. He taught her to appreciate fine art and literature, damped down her narcotic experimentation, and encouraged her to apply for drama college. She will always be grateful to him, she says.

His recent breakdown, when he was arrested and sectioned for violent offences and had bipolar disorder diagnosed, was a complete shock. “I read his autobiography recently, and I wish I’d known then, but I don’t think even he knew. The moods and the withdrawals – you just assume somebody’s having a bad day, you don’t realise they are suffering from a clinical condition.”

Nick Broomfield, the documentary director who paved the way for Michael Moore, was another long-term relationship. He was 14 years older than her, and possessed of a huge ego. He must have been impossible to live with. “I’m trying to be kind,” she laughs when pressed. In the end she settles on this: “I’d much rather have a curious and creative and fiery individual than not.”

For the past five years she’s been with Russell Haswell, a sound artist eight years her junior. It sounds almost cosy. They have a little house with a lot of land in Suffolk, “no stairs to climb, ten minutes to vacuum, heating bills incredibly reasonable”. No kids, however: “We don’t feel quite grown-up ourselves yet.” We even spend a few minutes discussing – readers of Private Eye’s “Me and My Spoon” column will get a kick from this – her fine collection of Georgian silver spoons. No, really: her parents are antique jewellery dealers.

Altogether you feel that this one-time punk tearaway is what the French call bien dans sa peau– comfortable in her own skin. Literally: she rejects facelifts or Botox, and has the wrinkles to prove it. They suit her. Thirteen years ago Robert Crampton wrote in The Times that Donohoe “has the sort of face that will age well and turn her into a much-loved and still-fancied character actress in 20 years’ time”. She’s seven years ahead of schedule.

“Oh bless,” Donohoe says, when reminded of this line. “Do you know, that’s so flattering. Sometimes looks do get in the way, but I’ve always considered myself a character actor. It’s very difficult in a world that demands that young actresses be sexy and gorgeous, rather than bright and intelligent. And to have the opportunity to do it in front of 8 million people a week is the cream on the cake. I hope I can deliver, I really do.”

And with a wolfish grin and a twinkling eye, she heads off for her next appointment: to have her back seen to by Arsenal’s masseur. “All the footballers those hands have touched! Yum!” Emmerdale’s cake just got a whole lot richer.

Amanda Donohoe makes her Emmerdale debut on Thursday

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